Sasha Fletcher

MY HEART IS AN ICE FLOE AND IT WILL WRECK YOU

We were sitting in the kitchen making dinnerwhen the radio told us how polar bearswere slowly moving across the arctic circle, headedinevitably towards warmer climatesand our still-beating hearts, which call out to themlike an all-night buffet. I told youNo polar bear is going to eat the still-beating heartof the woman I love as long as I liveand you said that that was really sweetso I dove into the sea. EventuallyI found myself in the Arctic. It was coldso I put on a sweater. I lay down on the groundwith my mouth open and I waited. When a polar bear came byI closed my mouth down around its legand I said Now you are trappedand the polar bear bled all over my face and died.I built a home in the polar bear’s stomachand I built a fire in my home in the polar bear’s stomachand walked on out of that home with a year’s supply of dinner.That night I was surroundedby a pack of polar bears seeking vengeance.I fled across the ice and commandeered an icebergwith which I set sail for your smiling faceuntil I shipwrecked some sailors. There I wasadrift in the Arctic, surroundedby the broken bodies of shipwrecked sailorsevery one of them weeping and bleeding and begging to die,so I built a ship from their bones and off I wentinto the sunset with the wind at my backand that ship just cried and cried. I asked the ship to stop that.I said Stop that. Nobody cares about your sadnessI sang to the ship and it cried and it criedand a children’s choir five hundred strong joined inand we all sang out Nobody cares about your sadnessand we all kept singinguntil the sky broke open and the curtain droppedand the broken hearted wives of the shipwrecked sailorsdrowned us in applause.

Sasha Fletcher is author of it is going to be a good year (Big Lucks Books, 2015), one novella, and several chapbooks of poetry.